Global Hunger Index explained: how India's score of 24.1 is worked out, and why Delhi disputes it

What is the Global Hunger Index?

It is a yearly score that tries to sum up how much hunger and undernutrition a country has, on a scale where 0 is no hunger and 100 is the worst.

The index is published by three European aid groups, Concern Worldwide, Welthungerhilfe and Helvetas. The 2026 edition, titled “No Security without Food Security”, came out this week and scored 122 countries.

Scores are grouped into bands: up to 9.9 is low, 10 to 19.9 moderate, 20 to 34.9 serious, 35 to 49.9 alarming, and 50 or more extremely alarming.

How is the score calculated?

It combines four indicators, each given a set weight.

Undernourishment, the share of the whole population that does not get enough calories, counts for a third of the score. Child mortality, the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, counts for another third. The last third is split between two measures of young children’s growth: stunting (too short for their age, a sign of long-term undernutrition) and wasting (too thin for their height, a sign of acute undernutrition).

Each figure is first converted to a 0 to 100 scale against a fixed ceiling just above the worst national value seen since 1988, then the four are added up with their weights. The data are not collected by the index itself. Undernourishment estimates come from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, stunting and wasting from the WHO, UNICEF and household surveys, and child mortality from a UN inter-agency group.

Where does India stand this year?

India scores 24.1 and ranks 100th of 122, level with Ethiopia, in the serious band it has been in since 2012.

That is better than Pakistan (25.5) and Afghanistan (28.6) but behind Bangladesh (19.2), Nepal (14.5) and Sri Lanka (10.2), all rated moderate. South Asia as a whole scores 23.5, against a world score of 18.1.

Three of India’s four indicators have improved. Undernourishment is down to 9.8% from 10.5% in the previous period. Stunting has fallen to 29.3%, from half of all young children at the turn of the century, and has moved out of the “very high” category for the first time. Under-five mortality is down to 2.7%.

So why is the score still serious?

Because child wasting has gone up. The share of young children who are dangerously thin for their height rose from 16.9% to 19.0%, the highest in South Asia and higher than any other country on the list, ahead of Timor-Leste, Sudan and Yemen. Because wasting is one of the four inputs, a rise there cancels much of the gain elsewhere.

The report’s authors say access to calories “has not fully translated into improved nutritional outcomes for young children”, and that India’s “incremental gains are real, yet they remain vulnerable to climatic and economic headwinds”. They point to the India Meteorological Department’s forecast of a 60% chance of below-normal rainfall in the monsoon core zone as a risk.

Can this year’s rank be compared with last year’s?

Not reliably, and the index itself says so. India was 102nd of 123 last year, so it appears to have moved up two places. But the set of countries changes each year, and the underlying data are revised, so ranks and scores from different editions are not meant to be compared.

The undernourishment figure shows why. The 2023 edition put India’s undernourishment at 16.6%; the 2026 edition puts it at 10.5% for 2017-19 and 9.8% now. To track a country over time, the report recalculates earlier years on the same basis. On that like-for-like measure, India’s score has eased from 25.8 in 2018 to 24.1 in 2026, a much slower improvement than between 2006 and 2012.

Why does the government object to the index?

It argues that the index mostly measures children’s health, not hunger.

When India was ranked 111th in 2023, the Ministry of Women and Child Development called the index “an erroneous measure of hunger” that showed “a malafide intent”. It said “three out of the four indicators used for calculation of the index are related to the health of children” and cannot represent the whole population. It said stunting and wasting result from “complex interactions of various other factors” besides hunger, and that there was “hardly any evidence” that child mortality is an outcome of hunger. It also described the undernourishment figure as based on an opinion poll of 3,000 people.

The ministry’s sharpest point was on wasting. Its own Poshan Tracker, the government’s nutrition monitoring system, showed wasting “consistently below 7.2 per cent”, against the 18.7% the index used that year. The government had not responded to the 2026 edition by Sunday morning.

Who is right?

Both sides are measuring something real. The index’s designers say they include child indicators on purpose, because children are the most vulnerable to a poor diet and wasting and stunting capture both sudden and long-term undernutrition. The government is right that a child can be wasted for reasons other than a lack of food, and that a composite score hides those differences.

The gap between the survey figure and the Poshan Tracker figure is the part that most needs settling, since one is more than double the other. Until India has a fresh national nutrition survey whose figures both sides accept, the argument over the number is likely to return every October.